596 CONFERENCE ON NATURAL BEAUTY 



program for extensive scenic highways reaching the parks, the na- 

 tional forests and other areas of natural beauty. 



It is imperative that no highway be built without a prior evaluation 

 to assure that no area of natural beauty shall be needlessly destroyed. 

 It is absolutely imperative to exclude highways from those areas 

 where a highway would destroy the natural beauty which the high- 

 way would seek to exhibit. The prime horrible example of the 

 capacity of a highway to destroy the natural beauty it is designed to 

 reveal is afforded by the National Capital Parks' George Washington 

 Memorial Parkway, which has wholly destroyed the natural beauty 

 and the recreational values of the most intensively used portion 

 of the historic Chesapeake and Ohio Canal. (It is not too late 

 for this administration to undo the harm done here by earlier 

 administrations. ) 



Natural beauty will survive nowhere if we attempt to make all 

 of it available from the car window. The best possible view from 

 the road is the surest way to guarantee that highways will ac- 

 complish a maximum destruction of natural beauty. The escape 

 from the highway and the motor car is increasingly the crucial test 

 of whether we have natural beauty. Peace, serenity, the opportu- 

 nity to enjoy the sounds of nature, and an escape from the jangle 

 and hubbub of the highway are essential to any real enjoyment of 

 natural beauty. 



GLADYS L. BROWN. With the ever increasing problems in the 

 disposal of used material, whether it be detergents used by the house- 

 wife, aluminum foil used by the picnicker or camper, or worn out 

 refrigerators and automobiles, have we reached the moment in so- 

 ciety when the producer of a product must be required to assume 

 some responsibility for advising the ultimate user of the product on 

 how it can be disposed of without scarring the land, polluting the 

 water or creating other health hazards and required to do whatever 

 research necessary on methods and techniques of disposal in order 

 to be able to provide such information? 



MEREDITH F. BURRILL and SAUL B. COHEN. Natural beauty can 

 be separated neither phenomenologically nor conceptually from the 

 concept of landscape which, in turn, is the spatial expression of the 

 man-physical environment system. Thus, this conference and suc- 

 ceeding commissions and programs devoted to natural beauty, cannot 

 treat the topic in isolation. In our concern with natural beauty, we 

 must recognize the interconnectability and interdependence of the 



